Not sure how many schools I should be applying to, right now I have 5 picked out (3 top schools, 1 mid level, 1 safety).
A little about my background:
BS in Film from Penn State 3.2 GPA
MBA International Business from an online school 4.0 GPA
MA International Marketing Management from The University of Leeds (in UK) equivalent 3.7 GPA
I have traveled a lot and lived in Japan for 2 years, intermediate level of Japanese language ability. (not sure if they will take those kinds of things into consideration though)
GRE is scheduled, aiming for the 90th percentile or higher, pretty confident I can get there.
Any suggestions on schools I would have a good chance at and how many I should be applying to?
Your list of schools should be based on your research interests. Have you conducted any research before - like assisting a business professor or someone in another department? If you don’t have research experience getting admitted to a PhD program will be challenging. Your language skills will matter less than that.
I have some research experience, nothing published but a dissertation and some projects. It’s pretty broad so I can connect my research with a lot of potential advisers. Still don’t know how many schools to attempt this with or what caliber schools I should be shooting for. Thanks.
Most PhD hopefuls apply to between 5 and 12 schools depending on the field and how badly they really want to be in a PhD program the next year. If I were you I’d probably aim somewhere in the middle of that - maybe around 7-9 programs. AFAIK marketing is not an overly competitive field (10+ seems to be for very competitive PhDs like clinical psychology).
Your research experience is actually going to be key in determining what caliber of program you can apply to. Your undergrad grades are decent and your MA grades are good but about expected for an MA student. I’m not familiar with how Leeds is viewed in the business community, so I’m not sure what the impact will be. The grades for the MBA at the online university will likely not be much of a factor. You don’t have GRE or GMAT scores to report…have you taken any practice tests yet? With only your grades to go on, really, there’s an incomplete picture of you and thus not a lot on what caliber you can reach for.
A school that wouldn’t admit a person of your grades who had mediocre research experience may admit someone with your background with excellent experience and recommendations.You say that you have a thesis and ‘some projects’. Have you ever assisted a professor with some research in their research lab? What does ‘some projects’ look like - independent studies, or presented at research meetings, or what? And your interests may be relatively broad, but part of the process is narrowing those down and picking some advisor you’d be super excited to work with. You start from the research interests and tailor your list to that, not the other way around.